With a growing number of services being provided by servers across computer networks, a continually increasing effort is being focused on improving the availability of such servers. Battery backups, uninterruptable power supplies (UPSs), redundant server components, and redundant servers have all seen widespread use in recent years, particularly by large-scale computer network service providers. But as the market for network services has continued to grow, the level of competition between service providers has also grown. As a result, service providers are exploring new alternative designs and configurations that improve system availability, but that also lower the complexity and cost of the resulting system.